


Wolf and Cub

by anthean



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon Era, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2507507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthean/pseuds/anthean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first full moon in the Gorbeau house. Cosette has not transformed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf and Cub

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afamiliardog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afamiliardog/gifts).



> A treat for tumblr user afamiliardog, who wanted a werewolf!Cosette AU! Hope you like werewolf!Valjean as well.

The old woman takes his money readily enough when he offers six months’ rent in advance. At the mention of his granddaughter she frowns and awkwardly hints that, as young people were unpredictable when the change came upon them, he was welcome to use the basement, which locked, for only a very modest increase in rent. He is startled—not being born to it, he is always suspicious at the ease with which others can see the wolf in him—and assures the old woman that his granddaughter will be perfectly gentle when she transforms, and that he will stay with her in their rooms. He says all this as briefly as possible, not wanting to be memorable, and not knowing that reticence is often as memorable as exuberance, especially from one of the wolf-folk searching for a den. The old woman shrugs, says it’s all the same to her, but he would pay for any damage to the building or furnishings, and hands him the keys with no more fuss. She remembers him, though.

He fetches the child and brings her back to the house, and several weeks pass in tranquil bliss before he thinks again of the moon.

“Cosette,” he says finally, sitting down where she plays on the floor with her doll. He takes the doll from her and holds it on his lap; she looks at him calmly, trusting that he will give the doll back. He smoothes the doll’s hair, which has gotten mussed. “The full moon is tomorrow. Can you be good, if we stay in this room? If I stay here with you?”

“Oh! Of course I will be good,” she says, already reaching for the doll again, clearly considering the conversation over. He pulls the doll away, just a little, and she withdraws.

“You won’t be scared?” he presses, unsure if she understands what he asks.

“I’ll be asleep, of course,” she says, and takes the doll from him. She begins to rock the doll and sing to it, and he retreats to the table, worrying. Love for this child has only just begun to crack open his heart, and now he is learning that to open oneself to love is also to open oneself to worry. Could a child so small truly sleep through the transformation? When he had first been bitten, he could not have slept through a full moon even if he had wanted to—and sleep would have been a balm, a sweet respite from the shackles, the biting fury of the wolves chained beside him—he could not think of it. His brain shied away. But perhaps that was the answer, he realizes: he had been bitten, and against his will, but Cosette had been born a wolf. Surely that was the difference. By the window, Cosette lies in a patch of thin sunlight, holding her doll above her head and gazing at it. He smiles. All will surely be well.

The next night, he closes and locks the door, then drags the table up against it, afraid not of the lack of control of his young charge but of the unknown inhabitants of the house and neighborhood. Cosette had gone to bed clutching her doll, making indulgent noises whenever he asked if she was sure she was not afraid. All children laugh at their parents’ worries, and Cosette learned this skill as though she had always had someone to worry for her. Soon, she slept. He waits in the outer room for the moon to rise.

The shift comes on him quickly, as it always does, and he shakes himself roughly and paces in a circle, his huge paws heavy on the floor. He can smell the cub in her room, hear her even breathing and tiny shifts as she pulls her doll closer, lost in some dream. He must protect the cub, must guard her, he knows, and he noses the door open and trots into her room.

Cosette has not transformed. He can see her on the bed, even in the dark, still human-shaped, but more importantly for this form he can smell her, smell the wolf deep within her and the human over the wolf.

Perhaps the moon hasn’t reached her in the depths of her room? But there had been no moon in the windowless prisons of Toulon, and he had transformed then, he and a hundred other convicts with the wolf in them, each chained by the neck to an iron ring in the floor and around the belly to the two wolves on either side. Later, there had been no moon in Fantine’s sick-room, where he had curled under her bed and listened to her ragged wet breaths above him.

Perhaps Cosette is sick, or the ability to transform had been beaten out of her. He whines at the thought, and the sound wakes Cosette, who stares at him with sleepy eyes.

Sleepy eyes, sunken in their sockets, in a bony, starved, face. Abruptly he understands. Cosette’s body is too abused and malnourished to survive the transformation, and so it has locked itself into one form to save itself. Even after weeks of full meals and innocent play, she has not restored the reservoirs of strength she needs to transform. It had been like that for some of the convicts: drained by hard labor and weakened by starvation, they had been chained up with the wolves anyway and found themselves still human when the moon rose. Those men rarely ended the night alive.

And Fantine had been too sick at the end, had only gripped his ruff in her weak hand and murmured about the moon.

He whines again as the memory seizes him, and Cosette reaches out a hand to touch his muzzle. “Papa,” she says, and that decides him. He leaps onto the bed beside her and settles down; Cosette immediately puts her arms around him and buries her face in his ruff. Stretched out, he is longer than she.

“It’s so warm,” Cosette says, already drifting back to sleep. “Mama was warm like that. She played with me, and taught me to run.” Her voice grows quiet, the words muffled. “But Mama left, and I stopped.”

She’s asleep. He sniffs at her hair and settles her more comfortably against him.

In the morning he gets up carefully, leaving Cosette tucked in with her doll, and sits in the second room while the sun rises. Then he leaves the house to buy meat and bread.

The next full moon, Cosette transforms into a healthy brown wolf cub, paws too big for her body and eyes still baby blue. She stalks his tail and chases him yipping around their small room until he knocks her down and pins her with one paw, washing her ears while she buffets his nose in protest. She races off again as soon as he lets her up, and soon plays herself into exhaustion. She finally flops down in the center of the room, little ribs heaving, and sleeps the rest of the night.

“Do you remember the last time you transformed?” he asks her in the morning. She sits at the table, swinging her legs and devouring bread and cheese for her breakfast.

She hums to herself and thinks for a moment. The sun in the window behind her lights her hair, all in charming disarray; he must have her brush it when she finishes eating.

She looks up at him, wide blue eyes bright. “No,” she says, and returns to her meal.


End file.
